Secret Handshake

Our training and blogging friends over at BoulderDog recently entered a new verb into our dog training lexicon. In a post called Please Don’t Blagojevich My Dog, Deborah decries the audacity of a stranger requiring her lovely poodle Sadie to perform an additional task in order to receive the treat meant for straight-forward socialization. In other words, the act of taking a treat from a stranger wasn’t “enough” for this guy. He wanted something in exchange for that treat, a treat that Deborah provided, by the way.

It’s an action now known as “to Blagojevich” because for some people something is NEVER enough. As I noted in the comments, I’ve had people get mad at me for handing over treats without asking the dog to “do something.” And, honestly, if Lilly is being a mooch, I’d prefer she do something for the food (thank goodness for her strong default SIT), but it made me wish we had some secret handshake or mysterious code phrase with which to discern our kind of dog people from the rest.

What are we Free Treaters? Bait Baggers? Praise-o-holics?

Maybe we need a secret agent code question along the lines of this welcome mat to ID each other … because so much of our hard work proceeds in microscopic increments that are likely invisible to outsiders.

Or I ask, “What’s inside a Kong?”

And, you reply, “The gift of time.”

Or I ask, “Who whispers in the night?”

And, you say, “Only that idiot on TV.”

Maybe we should all wear discreet lapel pins shaped like +R (for positive reinforcement).

Be it from an abundance of networking (social and otherwise) or from the waves of scary-life things, I’m more attuned to the power of and my need for a certain brand of togetherness.

I recently learned, for example, that if one Mini Cooper driver flashes her lights at another Mini Cooper driver it’s called “winking.” So far, most that I see on the road wink back. Silly, I know, but it’s a happy little exchange in a world that can be otherwise much of the time.

So, next time you see someone you suspect is a like-minded dog person, say something nice because that dog sitting so nicely on the side of the trail may just be working really hard at something that looks like nothing.